fee for short film score

[Ibis]

I'm an experienced composer with several indie feature film scores and a number of short films. My work so far has been mostly no budget or low budget and in some cases, straight to DVD (good sales though). I've won some awards and had some excellent reviews of my music.

I have a chance to score a short 35mm film with a professional film maker. His credits include major product commercials in the US, possibly in Europe too. It will be almost 10 minutes of music. It looks like a very positive creative experience and likely a very good showcase for me.

I'm wondering what range an established composer would charge for an electronic realization. It would include my composer fee plus me as arranger and musician to realize the score with VSL. At this point, I am not considering outside musicians and therefore will not need to rent an outside studio or engineer.

Thanks, CI

[zentrumsounds]

Always a difficult question this. In my experience (an Irish composer who has worked on numerous films over the years), the fees really depend on overall budget and expected audience. This is an interesting pdf created by our Contemporary Music Centre which aims to help composer define fees though it is more contemporary music commission oriented then commercial film music:

http://www.cmc.ie/opportunities/pdfs/commission-guidelines.pdf

However you may very well be in a different league! My last two films were art films lasting about 10minutes each and both had composer budgets of around 10k euros.

[Errikos]

[quote=zentrumsounds]Always a difficult question this. In my experience (an Irish composer who has worked on numerous films over the years), the fees really depend on overall budget and expected audience. This is an interesting pdf created by our Contemporary Music Centre which aims to help composer define fees though it is more contemporary music commission oriented then commercial film music:

Would you mind posting the URL or the PDF from your COntemporary Music Centre defining the fees? And €10K seems stratospheric to me for 10' art films, where about €1-1.5K is the norm if anything at all. Well done if that is the case, and perhaps there is somewhere on the Internet where we can watch those films, or at least hear the music for them? I would be very very interested.

Regards.

[zentrumsounds]

Ah I reedited the link which went missing due to strange formatting issues in safari.

Mmm, yes I guess 10k may seem like a lot of work but the projects can sometimes last many months until the artist is completely happy with the finished product. Below are links to some examples of this work.

http://www.clarelangan.com/iceabove.htm
http://www.clarelangan.com/metamorphosis.htm

[mathis]

[quote=zentrumsounds]

Compelling stuff.

[Holgmeister]

 I once read that German public broadcast (like ARD or ZDF) pays around 5.000 EUR per score for a feature length production .  (Something like "Tatort", 90 minutes) .